Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Marlin’s Dreaming - ‘Trophies’

There’s just something so very “deep south” about the jangly lo-fi indie of Dunedin’s Marlin’s Dreaming. ‘Trophies’, off the band’s 2021 album, Hasten, is merely the latest spin on a form of intoxicating melodic guitar pop the region has long since been famous (infamous, un-famous) for. ‘Trophies’ is our final Choice Kiwi Cut for 2021.

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Unknown Mortal Orchestra - 'That Life'

UMO’s ‘That Life’ was quite simply one of the earworms of 2021. Here’s what art-popper-extraordinaire Ruban Nielson said at the time of its mid-year release:

“I saw this painting by Hieronymus Bosch called The Garden of Earthly Delights and in the painting there was a mixture of crazy stuff going on, representing heaven, earth, and hell. When I was writing this song, “That Life,” I was imaging the same kind of “Where’s Waldo” (or “Where’s Wally” as we call it in New Zealand, Australia, and the UK) of contrasting scenes and multiple characters all engaged in that same perverse mixture of luxury, reverie, damnation, in the landscape of America. Somewhere on holiday under a vengeful sun.”

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Chaos In The CBD & Mongo Skato - 'Brainstorm'

Raised in Auckland but now based primarily in the UK, touring and releasing music under the Chaos in the CBD moniker, production duo - and brothers - Ben and Louis Helliker-Hales have developed a solid global following in dance music circles across the past decade. There’s been a series of consistently top notch releases over that period and this year’s Brainstorm EP was no exception. The title track, which is a collaboration with another local artist Mongo Skato, oozes so much deep house warmth it was the most obvious choice cut on the release.

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Anthonie Tonnon - 'Two Free Hands'

Anthonie Tonnon’s ‘Two Free Hands’ dates all the way back to 2017 but it was included on this year’s Leave Love Out of This album so it qualifies as a 2021 choice cut. Tonnon never ceases to amaze with his rare ability to write and produce perfectly crafted pop songs which frequently snub lyrical convention and musical formula. ‘Two Free Hands’ is just one such example, and Tonnon has made a career out of combining his instinct for the experimental and the avant garde with an uncanny knack for pure pop vibes. He is, without question, one of Aotearoa’s most underrated artists.

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: The Chills - 'Monolith'

During a year (and in a world) full of upheaval and uncertainty it’s sometimes reassuring to know that some things never change. Especially when that “thing” has been around for decades and involves the mercurial ability to produce clever, quirky, intimate pop music on a whim. Step forward Martin Phillipps and The Chills, with another understated pop masterclass in the form of 2021 album Scatterbrain. It probably won’t win any shiny gongs or be acclaimed as the band’s “best ever” in years to come (because it definitely isn’t that) but it still has enough personality and warmth to be considered yet another primo addition to the band’s ongoing legacy. ‘Monolith’ was the scene-setting album opener and one of my own favourites ...

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Album Review: Manchester Orchestra - The Million Masks of God (2021)

First things first: Manchester Orchestra are not from Manchester, England. Nor are they from Manchester, anywhere else. Manchester Orchestra are not even an orchestra. They’re an Atlanta, US-based alt-rock four-piece, and the band’s 2021 album, The Million Masks of God, is album number six in a career that dates all the way back to 2004.

Over the course, the band have appeared at big festivals such as Lollapalooza, Coachella, and Reading, and despite having an otherwise relatively low profile outside of their homeland, they’ve clocked up an impressive number of live television performances on US variety/chat shows like the Late Show with David Letterman (4 times), Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Jimmy Kimmel Live! … if I hadn’t heard the band’s music, you could say it’s exactly the sort of mainstream rock resume I’d normally be a quite wary of and steer well clear of.

 And yet, here we are, late into 2021, and The Million Masks of God is shaping up to be one of the very best new release albums I’ve heard all year. I’d heard snippets - or singular tracks - lifted from the band’s previous full-length outing A Black Mile to the Surface (2017), all of which left enough of an impression for me to pick up The Million Masks of God almost as soon as it was released.

I initially thought the band might have some loose connection (or shared membership) with Seattle indie-folkers Fleet Foxes, such is the similarity in style, and the frequently layered vocal offerings of singer Andy Hull are not all that dissimilar to those of Fleet Foxes main man, Robin Pecknold. Albeit Pecknold and Fleet Foxes rely more heavily on actual harmonies than filters and studio wizardry such as over-dubbing.

The Million Masks of God feels like an assured and self-aware release, an album with a range of lyrical themes - although death does seem like the most predominant concern - and a blend of musical styles. With Hull’s vocal delivery perhaps becoming the album’s most consistent feature, and arguably, along with clever wordsmithery, the glue that holds it all together.

It’s an album of emotional peaks and troughs, where soft acoustic moments sit comfortably alongside edgier or heavier rock-out flashes. Where grand orchestral flourishes push hard up against what I suspect is the band’s more natural (collective) instinct to just relax and let everything breathe. Where the production is often lush, yet the arrangement occasionally sparse or spacious.

Nothing ever feels too rushed or forced. There’s conflict and contradiction to be found on The Million Masks of God. Equal parts joy and sadness. You get the sense on some songs that Hull is genuinely working through issues as he sings about them. Whether it’s mortality, afterlife, or perhaps that most confusing of life perennials, a human relationship. Searching for an answer without ever really being certain about the question.

Whatever else it is, it’s a brilliant listen, a journey, and a stick-on certainty to be one of this blog’s albums of 2021.

Highlights: ‘Angel of Death’, ‘Bed Head’, ‘Telepath’, ‘Dinosaur’, and ‘The Internet’.

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Leisure - 'Flipside'

I’m not going to lie. I’m partial to the odd bit of 70s-style soft rock. Or yacht rock as it may sometimes be called. Just not too much of it. Small doses etc. I just don’t like to talk about it. Or write about it. In fact, I give a mate of mine some grief occasionally for admitting the exact same thing, whilst harbouring my own dirty little secret. It’s a nostalgia thing, a throwback to a 1970s childhood, when that sort of stuff dominated mainstream radio. When we had very little else other than mainstream radio. Which may or may not be my excuse for listening to a fair bit of Leisure over the past year or so … shamelessly lush, soft disco-infused tracks like ‘Take You Higher’, ‘Mesmerised’, and this Choice Cut, ‘Flipside’. All great slices of pure pop. All of which can be found on the Auckland band’s recently released Sunsetter album.

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Lorde - 'Oceanic Feeling'

Lorde has always been a bit hit and miss for me. Mostly miss. Obviously, she’s hugely significant as a local artist simply because she hit it big internationally at a very young age and she’s now somehow managed to expand her fanbase well beyond its initial demographic. There’s no question that she’s talented and there’s something about her which suggests she’ll enjoy a relatively long career. Good for her. 

This year Lorde released her third full-length album, Solar Power, and although I couldn’t really have cared less about it, there was enough chatter around its release to arouse my curiosity, so I had a sneaky listen. My overall impression was that the album is very much her “summer of love” moment and a few tracks are quite derivative of the early 90s “baggy” period. 

Others will beg to differ, but I thought the vast majority of Solar Power was listenable but mostly unrelatable. Then I reached the album closer ‘Oceanic Feeling’ … what a relief. Relief partly because I’d reached the end of what was essentially an obligatory listen, but mostly relief because I’d finally found the unheralded album gem which made the previous hour’s effort all the more worthwhile. It was one of just a couple of tracks from Solar Power I downloaded and kept for playlist compilation purposes. 

‘Oceanic Feeling’ simply oozes “typical New Zealand summer family break” in ways I’ve never heard articulated in song before. The references to father, brother, fishing, food, and outdoor fun are clear and obvious, but more specifically, for me, the vibe of ‘Oceanic Feeling’ is all about my own sepia-tinged distant childhood memories of long hot carefree summer days at my Grandparents’ beach house or “bach” in Hawke’s Bay. Thank you for that, Lorde. 

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

EP Review: The Emptys Response - Nový Den (2021)

Nový Den is a three track EP from Wellington multi-instrumentalist Jamie Scott Palmer, wearing his solo artist hat as The Emptys Response.

Released in early January of 2021, Nový Den loosely translates (from Czech) to mean “a new day”, which seems quite apt for a new year release, but I also suspect the title may be of greater personal significance for Palmer; as someone I’ve followed closely on social media for a few years he strikes me as a guy who is constantly looking to move forward, to challenge himself, and to challenge wider society’s accepted norms. Someone who craves answers to many of life’s more difficult questions. I’ve met Palmer out and about very briefly a few times in Wellington, usually at the tail end of gigs, which isn’t always the best environment to discuss such matters, or to get a full grasp of what makes an artist tick, so all of the above is merely an impression I’ve formed and not necessarily the gospel according to those who actually know him well.

What I do know for certain is that two of the more recent musical projects Palmer has been involved with - Dreams Are Like Water and Buffalo Bunny - produced some of the best beneath-the-mainstream-radar indie rock I’ve heard from these shores across the past decade. I’ve previously raved about the solitary Dreams Are Like Water release (here), so I won’t go into too much more detail about that. Suffice to say, Palmer’s contribution (keys, occasional guitar) was an integral part of that band’s appeal.

And the Buffalo Bunny stuff - collaborating with performance artist Victoria Singh - of 2019/2020 was almost more David Lynch than Lynch himself. The duo’s early 2020 Covid-themed track ‘2 Meters’ (clip here) was easily the best musical realisation of the dystopian or pre-apocalyptic collective angst created by the first global lockdown I heard during that period. The nonchalant or subtle mimicry of that whole “be kind to one another, follow the leader, and don’t ask questions” theme within ‘2 Meters’ was subliminally brilliant, mischievously subversive, and for many, right on the money. There were other great Buffalo Bunny moments too, and it is of some regret that I caught only the tail end of one of their rare live sets (at Wellington’s Pyramid Club) during their all too short-lived existence.

Which brings us to The Emptys Response and Palmer in his solo guise (phew, we got there eventually), by some distance his most prolific platform when it comes to work released online. Across many years. Including the Nový Den EP, which amounts to three relatively lengthy atmospheric instrumental tracks which blend together or cross-pollinate a number of different genres, from ambient to electronica to dark post-punk to a mild form of spacey psychedelia.

There was a certain irony for me that I was stuck in motorway traffic gridlock when first absorbing the scene-setting opener ‘The Drive Home’ which is effectively a probing low key synthetic pulse that threatens to explode at any moment without ever quite managing it across its near eight-minute duration. It is dark and quite tense without ever becoming too overwhelming. More of a mood or vibe than anything else, and I’m still trying to decide whether the drums are program generated or the result of a more human or live organic approach, on a loop. There’s a lot to be said for a live drum sound, and if this isn’t that, then Palmer’s done a pretty good job replicating it.

The second track, ‘Terraforma’, feels more substantial and is perhaps the most accessible of the three on offer. A dense, repetitive, almost bleak slice of semi-industrial grinding electronica which builds in tension to become quite riveting, it’s probably my pick of the bunch. See clip below.

The final track ‘11:11’ - which not coincidentally is its length - is an exercise in spaced out ambience and it’s another which slowly builds in intensity as we journey through its various subtle mood changing soundscapes. Ethereal and entirely beatless until just before the seven-minute mark, it may upon first listen feel a little directionless, or prone to drift for too long, but subsequent listens will reveal that there’s a lot more going on than might initially be obvious.

You can check out Palmer’s extensive collection of solo work on his website here.

Classic Album Review: Primal Scream - Vanishing Point (1997)

Craig Stephen runs the ruler over yet another Primal Scream classic …

Vanishing Point, the movie:

A cult classic released in 1971 which mirrors America’s obsession with cars and the open road, and the plight of the little guy against the authorities. It is essentially one long chase sequence as Kowalski (no first name), played by cult actor Barry Newman, commits to a bet to deliver a Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours. There are flashbacks to personal trauma, a radio DJ who eggs him on (“the last American hero, the electric centaur, the demi-god, the super driver of the golden west”) and cops on his back. Of course, it doesn’t end well.

Vanishing Point, the album:

There was a country rock n soul soundtrack, featuring Kim Carnes, Jimmy Bowen and Delaney, Bonnie and Friends, but even by the 90s it was long forgotten and hard to find. The concept of doing an album for an imaginary film wasn’t new. But doing a soundtrack for one which had already been done … well that was a little bit leftfield. And the Scream did it because they wanted to. The resulting album sounds nothing like the original soundtrack; indeed, it contains some of most ambitious music the Scream ever made. Their soundtrack was based on a skewed and likely substance-filled take on the nature of the film.

‘Burning Wheel’, the opening track, sounds like an outtake from Screamadelica, something that may have been a little too Krautrockian for that swaggering composition to the days of new drugs and when indie music crossed into dance. Its Syd-era Floyd, Faust, and Primals c.1985 all wrapped up in one.

The album’s centrepiece, and the lead single, ‘Kowalski’, samples heavily from the film itself – all from the DJ’s magnificent diatribes that turn a cop chase into a road race: “Two nasty Nazi cars are close behind the beautiful, lone driver / The police know that they’re getting closer ... closer / Closer to our soul hero in his soul mobile / Yeah, baby, they’re about to strike / They’re gonna get him, smash him, rape / The last beautiful free soul on this planet.”

Bobby Gillespie’s own, sparse lyrics seem only to fill the gap between the dialogue-cum-verses; a drum sample from Can’s ‘Halleluwah’ is thrown in and the song cribs the bassline from a Funkadelic song. Ex-Stone Roses bassist Mani is on fire here, a valuable addition to the gang.

The instrumental ‘If They Move Kill ‘Em’ – a line from the bloodiest and baddest western of them all, The Wild Bunch, is driven by a constant drum backbeat, a hollering synthesizer and pounding bass. Following closely by is ‘Stuka’, its dub bass intro introducing the cacophony of noise of the German dive-bomber in full flow. The airplane included wailing sirens intended to smash their enemies into submission, something the Primals attempt to recreate. There’s almost two minutes of instrumentalism before the voice kicks in, a muted, low-fi drone, which comes across as Darth Vader singing Lee Hazlewood, and limited to such oblique snippets as “I got Jesus in my head like a stinger / He moves from tree to tree in the back of my mind / A ragged shadowy figure, I got him.” Is this even Bobby Gillespie singing? Seems so.

An intriguing inclusion is a cover of Lemmy’s ‘Motorhead’, initially released as a B-side in his final days with 70s prog-punks Hawkwind, and his metal monster band’s debut single. The two songs are somewhat different with the metal version, more, erm metally. Scream’s take on this rock anthem is to revert to Hawkwind’s original, retaining all its nastiness and throwing in a perverse opening verse, with Gillespie sounding like a gecko being mauled by a domestic cat, and various loops and layers thrown in for good measure.

There’s also a chunk of instrumentals, including a brooding update of ‘Trainspotting’ from the Scottish drugs and ... well more drugs degenerate movie of the same name, with about two minutes trimmed from the version that appeared on the official soundtrack.

Among all this dub’n’bass and dirty garage rock, it is a little surprising to hear ‘Star’, the second single to come off the album (as part of an EP), which owes a little to ‘Loaded’, with a horn section, snaky melodica played by Augustus Pablo, and a sincere and simplistic chorus: “Every brother is a star / Every sister is a star” as well as these killer lines that Gillespie throws in to the love-in: “The Queen of England, there's no greater anarchist / One man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist.”

After the Stones-devotional Give Out But Don’t Give Up (1994), the Scream really took a leftfield turn with Vanishing Point. Out went the Keef riffs and Jagger swagger, in came an industrial level melding of krautrock, dub, electrofreakery and Ennio Morricone. It’s magnificently experimental, and utilises all manner of distortion, fuzztones, tape delays, drum machines, and sitars. It’s a rampant adventure into the unorthodox, at a time when British bands were encouraged to go retro. But this was the backlash to Britpop, the Santa Claus of music scenes that disappeared as quickly as it appeared. And with the Super Furry Animals and Radiohead ramping up the weirdness and the outlandishness at the same time, there was only way for the future of so-called Cool Britannia: oblivion. It was the beginning of something new: the Scream followed it up with XTRMNTR and Evil Heat, both of which simmered with unadulterated Krautrock, post-punk, Millenium confusion and anti-capitalist anger.

De dub version: Echo Dek (1997)

Echo Dek was the logical dub and remix version of the album which was released just a few months later. Master knob twiddler Adrian Sherwood was at the controls, bashing and smashing eight of VP’s tracks – with ‘Stuka’ getting the double version treatment. These already mightily impressive tracks were cut up and reconstructed into an even further and abstract dub orbit. Sherwood sampled Prince Far-I on ‘Wise Blood’, one of the rejigs of ‘Stuka’. Some tracks merit the makeovers but the versions of ‘Star’ and ‘Kowalski’, if we’re being honest, remain pretty much honest to the originals. Remix albums tend to suffer from laziness and record company pushiness, but Sherwood has a free rein and the passion to carry out a good job.